A variety of hand-held, electric motor-driven vibrators and massage apparatus are known. In a common design, an applicator or pedestal is affixed to the back of the back of the user's hand, but the motor is not attached to the applicator. Instead, the motor is secured to a stand and the motor drive shaft is connected to the applicator by a flexible shaft. This design is inadequate since use of the machine requires space for the positioning of the stand, and an operator's hand movement is limited to a specific area surrounding the stand.
In another type of finger massage apparatus, a single vibrating motor is secured to a pedestal, the bottom surface of the pedestal having a cushion or other resilient material affixed thereto. The resilient material is placed adjacent the top of the user's hand, and a plurality of resilient springs or other like cords affixed to the pedestal to form a loop about the cushion into which the user's hand is inserted. In use, the vibratory motion created by the motor will be transmitted through the pedestal and cushion to the user's hand and, to some extent, the user's fingers. The inadequacies of this category of finger massage apparatus are inherent in its design. By utilizing a single motor, the vibratory motion transmitted to the user's fingers is uniform and therefore unnecessarily limited.
Both types of vibratory massage apparatuses are cumbersome to use, and awkward in appearance, and provide a single point of vibratory contact with the region of the body being massaged. Neither is designed to transmit vibratory sensations directly through the fingertips of the user. What is needed is a mew type of vibratory massage apparatus, in which two or more vibrating sources provided vibratory sensations directly through the fingertips of a user or operator. Since a device should have an independent control for each vibrating motor, and should be simple and inexpensive to fabricate. Ideally, such a device should be more streamlined and, hence, more aesthetically pleasing in appearance and convenient to use, than prior known vibrating massage units.